Ready, Set, Coe!

In 1980, the great British runner Sebastian Coe made Olympic history. This summer, he?s set to do so again?as the mastermind of the London Games.

Published

July 23, 2012

For nearly three decades Sebastian Coe has been best known as the only man ever to win the Olympic 1500 meters twice. But now, with the arrival of the Olympic torch in London, he becomes the only man to win two 1500 golds and entice the Games to his country. As Chair of the London Organizing Committee, Coe is the lead conductor for this summer's athletic spectacle. After he retired from competition in 1990, Coe enjoyed a successful run in Parliament and served on many sporting committees, including the ruling council of the International Association of Athletics Federations. His political savvy and understanding of international athletics made him an ideal pick to lead the charge for the London bid.

I've known Seb since before his first Olympics, the 1980 Games in Moscow. He came to visit me and my old coach, Bill Bowerman, in Portland in 1979. At the time, he was 22 and just out of college, yet already a middle-distance star. Bowerman asked him about his training regimen. "It has been described as 'Coe's commando workout,'" Sebastian said back then. "In the fall, it's the use of everything you can think of in the gymnasium, lifting heavy weights twice a week, working every part of the body. After Christmas, we concentrate on every muscle from knees to sternum, using box-jumping, speed drills, repeatedly mounting a beam, high knee lifts, bounding on grass or a soft-sprung floor. It's simple athleticism, really, the coordinated transference of weight and force through the body."

Fortified by that formula, and fueled by a relentless passion, Coe put on a racing performance at the 1980 Moscow Olympics that defined him as an athlete–and foreshadowed the zeal needed to stage an entire Games. As you'll recall, just months before the Games, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, prompting U.S. President Jimmy Carter to launch a boycott of the Olympics. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain supported him. The British athletes were in a bind. Their government asked them to boycott, but their Olympic Association voted to go. "It is a clash of two worlds," Coe said then. "Politicians are ruled by expediency; athletes live in a world of natural law."

"In no way," his father, Peter Coe, told me when we were together in Moscow that summer, "does going to Russia indicate support for that country's behavior. To be called unpatriotic in no way makes it so. If you do, you don't understand athletes."

And Peter Coe knew athletes, one in particular. He'd coached his son since Seb was 12, helping to develop him into one of the best middle-distance runners ever. In the span of 41 days in 1979, Seb did the unprecedented. First he set the world record in the 800 meters with a time of 1:43.33. Next he broke John Walker's historic 3:49.4 standard for the mile with a 3:48.95. A month later, he cut the 1500-meter mark to 3:32.03. No one had ever held the 800, 1500, and mile world records at the same time.

That milestone aside, there was no guarantee of gold in Moscow, not with countryman and longtime rival Steve Ovett lurking in both the 800 and 1500. Coe was the favorite in the 800, having dominated the event of late. Ovett was the one to beat in the 1500, having won 45 straight 1500-meter or mile races since 1977 with an overpowering finishing kick.

As it happened, form did not hold up in the first of the two events. During the 800 final Coe "fell asleep" in the pack, failed to react when Ovett rocketed into the lead, and finished second. "Losing the 800 was a terrible disappointment," Coe said later. "If I hadn't had the 1500 coming up, I'd have been tortured with recriminations. I had to make myself ready for it."